


Should Have, Could Have, Would Have

by vaguenotion



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: BLLB Spoilers, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M, Spoilers, adam getting hurt, implied pynch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguenotion/pseuds/vaguenotion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's how his day has gone: Evil attacks Cabeswater. Evil manifests an iron bear trap to catch Adam. Adam steps in aforementioned bear trap. Evil tries to drown him, or suffocate him, or corrupt him, or whatever. Adam spends several hours lying in the dirt. Ronan shows up not long after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Have, Could Have, Would Have

Hindsight is 20/20. Adam Parrish had spent a good portion of his waking life revisiting past events, and so he knew this well. _I should have. I could have. Why did I think that was okay? Why did I walk in there, why did I say that, why did I do that?_

Should have, could have, would have.

But Adam was also highly intelligent, a gift ironically bestowed by his cruel father, and he knew that it was a trick. Rehashing and blaming himself never made the situation better, never removed the sting that came with the memories. He could--and did--over-analyze past events in the hopes of learning from them. _What did I say to my father that calmed him down, and how do I say it again?_ The biggest lesson he’d learned in eighteen years was that he was wasting his time. Every confrontation with his father had been a different field of broken glass, and his scarred feet were bare every time. Every conversation with Gansey was different from the last because neither of them were the same person that they’d been the conversation before. Every errand run in the bizarre and private company of one Ronan Lynch was a different brand of _Act Casual, But Don’t Let Him Get Away With That Shit._

Rehashing old memories was a deceitful trick because he learned very little at the cost of great emotional turmoil. It never helped him solve current problems, only made them seem more complicated. He knew this, well and intimately. So, given his current situation, Adam Parrish was struggling not to _should have, could have, would have._

Unfortunately, the bear trap clamped to his leg was making it difficult.

He measured his breathing and lay his head back down against the dirt of the forest floor, gentle with himself. His exhales were heavy and his inhales wavered. Occasionally, fresh tears would well up, but he had no control over how his body reacted to the shock and pain. He let them roll sideways across his temple, into his hair, tracing around his ear. _Cabeswater, help me._

It hadn’t been a nightmare creature. He’d seem them, from Ronan’s head. Nasty oily things with feathers and scales and beaks and claws, humanoid yet completely alien, tapping and scratching in the dark. He’d seen the white one, the one that listened to Ronan, which perhaps made it more terrifying than the ones that remained unhinged. Adam knew--unwillingly, uncomfortably--what those nightmares looked like.

It hadn’t been a nightmare.

This fact continued to baffle him. 

What else could it have been? Against his better judgement (was it though? What else was he meant to do, lying on the forest floor, bleeding into the dirt?) he began to slip back and examine what had happened. 

He was in Cabeswater. He had a stone in his hands about the size of a football, smooth and warm and gray. Heavy, solid, pulsing in his palms as if it had a heartbeat. He felt at peace, carrying the rock through the trees toward its proper location. Just a little touch up for the ley line. Adam had felt so calm, so comfortable moving through Cabeswater. He felt safe. Truly, genuinely safe. 

So of course this had to happen.

A feeling of dread had pierced his stomach, so sharply that he dropped the stone. It landed on the ground with a heavy sound, somehow equal parts subdued and violent, like his father slamming the door in another room. The wind shifted. Had there been wind? There was wind then, suddenly, moving through the trees with urgency. Adam looked up, listened. They were all whispering urgently, the trees. He felt the tug of the wind pulling at his clothes, rustling his hair. Something was wrong. He felt chilled, and frightened, and unbelievably small. He looked down at the stone at his feet. Reached to pick it up.

It felt cold as ice, the second his fingers brushed against it. Startled, he pulled his hand back as if he had been stung. Only seconds before, the rock had been alive with the ley line, alive with Cabeswater. Now it felt… _other._

 _Go,_ the trees were rasping. _Run. Run, little magician._

Adam was breathing was picking up speed. He looked in the direction the wind was pulling him. Turned his head to see where it was coming from.

What he found was darkness. Creeping forward like a spreading ink, casting the trees into shadows and invisible corners and cold fog. Blurring the edges as if it were trying to steal away what it touched. It was advancing quickly, covering yards in seconds. Adam’s stomach dropped, and froze over, and all at once, his focus had narrowed to one thing.

_Run._

Following the wind, Adam turned and raced into the trees. It felt an awful lot like he was chasing after Cabeswater: it was a few yards ahead, trying to escape the dark, and Adam was desperately trying to catch up. Behind him, the darkness soaked into the forest like a cold cancer, reaching for him. The trees were nearly screaming in the wind, howling as they were overtaken by the dark. Adam could feel pins and needles eating away at his back, a sharp static as Cabeswater wrestled with the cancer behind him. 

Away, away, away.

Run.

Fear swelled up into his chest as he ran, blindly following the feeling of Cabeswater as it retreated further and further ahead of him. _Don’t leave me_ , he pleaded. _Please don’t leave me!_

Cabeswater would not let him die. But it would not stop him from being hurt; he had learned as much when a stampede of should-be extinct animals left him with some impressive bruising. And now it felt-- _felt_ , not seemed, not interpreted, but physically _felt_ \--like Cabeswater was trying to flee the darkness, and was leaving him behind. 

Forgetting him, he realized, in the chaos of the chase.

In his peripheral vision, the darkness was inches from overtaking him. He could feel cold at his back, a strange carbonated chill that stung his exposed skin. _Cabeswater, help me!_

What happened next appeared out of nowhere. One second, the path ahead of him was clear, a carpet of dead leaves and dirt and the odd twig, as familiar as any other day. Within the span of two seconds, that detritus had twisted together, writhed into the a circular form and solidified into cold metal jaws, open wide on the ground in front of him.

In the same instant that he recognized what it was, his heel landed right in the center.

There was a metal sound as the spring triggered. A wet dull sound as the teeth sank into either side of his leg. The sound of bone breaking. Adam hit the ground in a brilliant flurry of limbs and dirt, tumbling to a stop abruptly. The chain rooting the trap to the ground pulled taught with a metallic shuffle. The breathe had flattened right out of Adam’s lungs, and he lay there for a few seconds, unable to inhale, all higher functions on hold.

One beat.

Two beats.

Three. 

When the pain hit, Adam let out a strangled, agonized sound. The darkness had overtaken him, spreading beyond, chasing the wind. Chasing Cabeswater. It was so heavy in his lungs that Adam felt like he was choking, a freezing humidity that made it hard to breathe. He reached blindly and dragged back only dirt, his nails filling with it, leaving marks in the earth. 

It took a while for the pain to really process. His attention was torn in two directions: Adam’s and Cabeswater’s. Adam’s focus had tunneled down exclusively to his leg, where white hot pain was pulsing up to his hip bone and back down, slowly narrowing to the broken leg, the metal teeth, the brace squeezing the injury into worse and worse shape. Cabeswater’s focus was frantic, disorienting, too sporadic for Adam to process. It left him reeling, gasping, disoriented. 

He pawed uselessly at his leg and cried out again, a pathetic, desperate noise. His fingers came back slick with red. He forced his eyes open and tried to see around him, but the world had become a mad swirl of branches, darkness, leaves, coldness, roots, malice. Cabeswater writhed around him as though it were in as much pain as he was. He couldn’t breathe. 

He couldn’t breathe. He was trapped in the chaos, physically anchored to the ground. A bystander, witness to an attack that was far beyond what he could comprehend.

The wind, and the whispering voices of Cabeswater, had risen to a constant ringing in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t tell which way was up, was left, was right or down. He couldn’t breathe. The ground rolled beneath him, pitching and tilting, and he didn’t know if it was because he was rolling around in agony, or if the earth was _actually_ quaking. 

He couldn’t breathe. He was choking. His eyes went wide. His back arched. Gasping. Fruitless inhale. A rasping sound. Mouth open, calling, pleading for air. Any air. The darkness filled his throat, filled his lungs, denied him air. Choking. White static in his eyes. Dying.

And then, all at once, release. A flood of oxygen, sweet and cool and smelling of moss. He gasped, audibly wheezing, flushing air in, out, in, out. His vision began to return. He coughed, panted. Moaned in pain. 

Still anchored in the bear trap, Adam lay on the ground with his eyes closed tight for what felt like forever, and what was probably only a minute. Maybe two. Breathing in, out. In, out. Each breathe smaller and easier than the last. He dug his fingers into the dirt and whimpered a little and tried to calm down, tried to regain his equilibrium. _Focus on breathing_.

When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his side. There was murky darkness about three feet in front of his face. It looked, to Adam, like a streetlight at night, illuminating only a circle of the earth before stopping abruptly, edged with inky darkness. Numb, Adam lifted his head and looked around. The light was circling him perfectly, boring down from above through the canopy. Sunlight. The rest of the forest looked like night, or close to night, the way heavy old growth forests might block out the sun before it ever had a chance of reaching the undergrowth. 

Adam breathed. Looked down at his leg. The bear trap had been included in the perfect circle of sunlight. Adam pushed himself onto his elbows, panting, examining it.

That’s when he noticed the roots, curling just outside of the sun circle, gnarled and black and shivering with anticipation like waiting fingers, itching to grab him. 

_You are the vessel_ , an ugly voice whispered, directly into his deaf ear. Adam twisted to his left, but nothing was there. Or, it was all around him. Unable to reach into the light. 

_You will be mine_ , it whispered again. Adam pushed his palm flat against his deaf ear, wincing. The voice felt cold in his ear, like a brain freeze. He forced himself to sit up, even when the act jostled his leg, pain shivering up into his femur, into his hip. He sucked a breath in through his teeth. 

The voice didn’t speak again, but he could feel its intention. Simultaneously, he felt Cabeswater, present in the warmth of the sunlight that was illuminating him. Warming him, shielding him. It had come back for him, reaching into the darkness. It was keeping the insidious thing from touching him, though it tried. 

Cabeswater had formed a protective circle around him, like it had done when the tiling had fallen from the roof at Aglionsby. A perfect circle, a barrier he couldn’t see. He was left with the odd sensation that Cabeswater had closed its hands around him, a small shield for a small magician. Adam was very aware that to both forces, he was very little and very temporary. 

The roots shivered, looking an awful lot like spider legs in the darkness. Adam watched as one of them, seemingly sentient and braver than the others, attempted to lunge forward into the light. The second it touched the circle, it sparked and curled backward into the darkness, retreating.

 _Come to me_ , the voice in his deaf ear whispered, alluring and gentle, kind and patient. Tempting. Adam took a few deep breaths, realizing why the voice seemed familiar. The tug on his heart, the desire to suddenly listen. A voice in your head that you would think was your own, unless you were paying attention.

And Adam was paying attention.

It was the same voice that had asked him to open the door when he was scrying, looking for Maura only two months earlier. It was the Third Sleeper.

The realization was almost a relief, to recognize this terrible oily thing lurking around him, waiting to snatch him up. He didn’t know what the Third Sleeper was, or who, or why, or _how_. Maybe it was all a trick. It had come in like a poison, leaking into Cabeswater, _his_ Cabeswater. The trees creaked in the darkness, aching, calling for help. Adam looked down at the blood soaking his lower left leg, the metal vanishing into his flesh. His stomach turned, and he looked away. It hurt more than anything his father had ever done to him, more than every broken bone he’d tried to hide or use despite the pain. 

This thing had done it to him. It had attacked him, it had attacked Cabeswater. Adam swallowed down the urge to reach his hand into the darkness. He balled his fists. 

“Help me, Cabeswater,” he whispered, his voice raspier than he thought it would be. Anger found it’s place between the pain and fear. Righteous anger, _how dare you_ anger. He schooled his breathing, from panting to deep breaths, seething breaths. _Get out. Get out of my forest. Get out of my head. You have no power here._

_You are not welcome._

The circle began to expand. Adam could feel it moving away from him, pushing against another force. He felt it inside of his chest, burning in his stomach. The roots began to curl away, slithering into the darkness, reluctant to leave the edge of the light, but desperate not to touch it. Sitting there in the dirt, Adam breathed harder and faster, jaw tight, eyes focused. _Get out. Get out. Get out._

Then, in the span of seconds, the darkness faded into daylight, leaving with a terrible rasping whisper, and a chilling howl that seemed to come from a great distance. The air warmed around him where he sat. As fast as it left, the sound of leaves rustling and birds chirping came back. A few fall leaves drifted down from the canopy like they had been shaken free, disturbed by the sudden exit.

It sounded like Cabeswater again. It smelled like moss and damp soil and fresh growth. The trees sighed a loaded exhale, their branches bowing gently like slumping shoulders. Adam eased onto his back and stared straight up, his chest heaving, eyes wide and blank. Slowly, he came back to himself. Or rather, Cabeswater returned him to his own body, no longer needing it as a vessel to chase the darkness out.

Adam lay there for a long time before the pain in his leg became unbearable again. 

He sat up with some effort. He felt sore and feverish. He reached shaking fingers to the union of metal and flesh and swallowed a strangled sob. It looked terrible. It felt worse. He grabbed at the jaws where they were spread open just under his calf, and tried to pry it apart. It didn’t appear to move at all, but it sent a shock of pain into his bloody flesh. The metal was slick, wet. He felt tears rush to his eyes, the unintentional byproduct of agony. 

The thing was still chained to the ground, anchored to a spike, and when he pulled himself toward it and gave it a tug, it refused to move. 

Plans formed and failed in his mind at a dizzying rate. Find a rock or a stick, pry it up: none available nearby. Hold your breath and try to pull the thing open: too much pain, no more pain, please, please. Call Ganzey: no phone, you idiot, you stubborn piece of shit, why do you still not have one? 

Ronan.

Ronan was his only option. Defeated, Adam rolled onto his side. Lying in the dirt. Panting in pain. Palms slicked red. Sweat beading on his brow. He lay his head gently against a small gathering of leaves and closed his eyes. Tears slid over his temple, curved around his ear.

He thought about how hindsight was 20/20, and found himself replaying what had just happened, mind racing. Third Sleeper? Somehow in Cabeswater. Not in Cabeswater anymore. Awake? Evil. Not evil in a way that his father was evil, or that movie villains were evil. Evil in a silent, breathless way, things watching with red eyes and cruel teeth. Too many teeth. Evil in a way that makes you feel sick. Called him a vessel. Wanted him. Wanted to kill him? Possess him. Have him. 

Adam closed his eyes and allowed himself a moan, because it felt like it would release some of the pain, some of the pressure that was filling up his chest. And it did.

Ronan. _How do you contact Ronan, Adam? Focus._

“Cabeswater,” he moaned, his voice hushed with fatigue, “please. Tell the Greywaren.”

The leaves rustled louder above him. Voices whispered in his ear, none of which he could translate, but they repeated the same word several times: _Greywaren._

“Please,” he repeated, the word tight with pain. “Please.”

More rustling, and then the sense of affirmation. They would help him. Ronan would come. Adam closed his eyes and felt, at once, utterly spent. He wanted to sleep. Some part of him knew not to. Blood loss and exposure, even among these warm magical trees. Outside of the forest, after all, it was winter. Looming over these concerns was the fear that that _thing_ would return. If he was asleep, it would overwhelm him. 

Time passed. Slow, sluggish, drunk. Adam moved in and out of alertness, his awareness focused almost entirely on his leg. The forest remained unchanging around him, and it was difficult to believe it had been invaded only shortly before. Cabeswater was so ancient and powerful, it was frightening to think anything could challenge it. Let alone make it run.

Adam’s vision was out of focus. His hands were lying in front of him, one palm facing the earth, the other open to the sky. Fingers curled slightly. He tried to focus on his breathing, focus on his hands. The blood that stained them was browning as it dried, growing tacky. He could smell it, mixed into the scent of the forest. It smelled thick and wet, like salt and copper and something rotting. 

Blood was a strange smell, he decided. So potent, but somehow subtle. Hard to know what water tastes like, because we’re made of it. Hard to tell what blood smells like, because we’re made of that, too. 

Shouldn’t have come to Cabeswater that day, he thought.

Could have run faster, could have run sooner. Could have outrun it.

Would have asked Ronan to come with him, to fight back with his white nightmare. Would have asked Blue to come, to reflect the darkness back, to amplify Cabeswater. Would have hated himself if they were here now, in just as much danger as him. Maybe they would have been hurt too, or killed.

Should have, could have, would have. He closed his eyes tight.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard the sound of someone in the distance, running toward him. An hour, maybe. Cabeswater involved driving to. Driving took time, even if laws were ignored, speedometers were tested. He had no idea what Ronan had been doing that day. He could have been coming from the Barns, an extra hour away from Henrietta. 

But he only felt relief, no guilt. He closed his eyes for a second or two and only opened them once he knew Ronan could see him, once he heard the footfalls come more rapidly, with more purpose. 

“Adam!”

He rolled onto his back in time to see Ronan skid to his knees, and was surprised by how dizzy it made him. “Jesus. Jesus Christ, Adam. Jesus.”

Adam’s lips parted, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He watched as Ronan’s hands ghosted over him for a moment, watched as the other boy best assumed how to handle the problem. 

“Black iron, what the fuck,” Ronan breathed, looking at the bear trap like he was equal parts afraid and murderous. Adam hadn’t even noticed that the metal was black. He lay there on his back and tried to keep breathing.

“I don’t-” he started, but found that there was no sentence to follow it. 

Ronan grabbed up a small stick, about an inch thick, only three inches long. Adam had seen it earlier, but it wasn’t able to help him pry the trap open, so he’d left it untouched in the dirt.

Suddenly, it was against his lips, lengthwise. “Bite down on this.”

Adam obeyed, and only once it was between his teeth did he realize why he was doing it. His breathing picked up. _No more pain, please. Oh, shit. God, no._

Satisfied that Adam wasn’t going to grind his teeth into pieces, Ronan took a deep breath. His expression suddenly looked focused, more in control than anything about the situation felt. He shifted and knelt beside Adam’s trapped leg.

“Deep breath, Parrish.”

_Fuck fuck fuck no no fuck no please_

Ronan gripped the bloody metal where Adam had gripped it. He took another breath. Adam may have whimpered. Then he pried the trap open.

It was slow, a struggle, but he didn’t waver, didn’t let it slip closed once he’d forced it open more. Slowly, the teeth slipped out of his flesh. Adam’s fingers sank into the earth with so much force that it felt like butter, his knuckles white. When he couldn’t grip it deeper, he dragged his fingers upward, leaving deep furrows in their wake. 

He screamed. It hurt more having it removed than it did when it bit him.

He heard the trap snap shut on itself. He saw Ronan shove it aside. His hands were red now, too. He tentatively held Adam’s lower leg in his hands, a strange tension in his shoulders that came from trying to hold something as gently as possible. “It’s broken. It’s broken, right?”

Adam was breathing heavily. Slowly, he managed to pull his teeth out of the stick in his mouth; they had sunk right into the wood. He spit it out. It fell to the dirt beside his neck. He panted and allowed himself to moan again, since it had helped the first time. His eyes were closed tight as Ronan lowered his leg to the ground.

“I need to sleep,” Ronan said. “Just for a few minutes. I need to get a first aid kit.”

Adam said nothing, but opened his eyes. He rolled his head to the side as Ronan lay down directly next to him. A warm, wet palm rested on his forearm; fingers curled around his skin. Ronan held onto him like an anchor, but which one of them was the anchor for which, Adam didn’t know. 

“It’ll be fast,” Ronan promised. His voice was hard. He sounded angry, but Adam knew it wasn’t directed at him. “Don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t,” Adam panted, still recovering from having the trap removed. “Don’t stay asleep.”

Ronan looked over at him and smiled humorlessly. “I won’t.”

He closed his eyes. Adam watched as his breathing slowed and evened out. He wondered if Cabeswater was helping Ronan fall asleep, or if he had just perfected the act of nodding off. Ronan’s hand remained wrapped around his forearm, warm, steady. Adam’s skin must be cold by now, after not moving for so long, lying in the forest, losing blood. He watched Ronan breathe. His eyes were beginning to slip out of focus again. He would blink, and they’d stay closed for longer than he intended. He’d open them in a panic. _Don’t fall asleep._

_Adam Parrish: Army of One, calling Ronan Lynch. “Army of Two” confirmed suitable title. Please come back._

Because here in Cabeswater, when Ronan slept, it felt like he was no longer really there. Warm, breathing, right beside him. But absent, beyond just sleeping.

Adam’s eyes slipped shut again, and stayed that way. Maybe he could stay alert while his eyes were closed. Freed from the trap, his leg pain had dulled to something more consistent, more stable than it had been when it was being crushed by the metal jaws. He tried to focus on that, and found that it was a miserable way to stay awake. He tried to focus on Ronan’s hand, but he just drifted back to wishing Ronan was awake. 

He was so tired. Surely he hadn’t lost that much blood. Driving that darkness away had surely taken a lot out of him. A combination of both, perhaps. Hadn’t the darkness filled his lungs, like inky black water? Hadn’t he been drowning in it? That had to be taking a toll on him. He refused to entertain the possibility that he was going to bleed out.

“ _Adam,_ ” Ronan snapped, sitting up. Adam sluggishly opened his eyes, and then startled when he found Ronan leaning right over him. He drew in a deep breath and blinked owlishly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Ronan was already leaning away. He was clutching a first aid kit, a big one. He opened it, the contents inside reminding Adam that it was a dream item: gauze and bandage wraps and a splint, disinfectants and pain killers, but also chattering teeth and what looked like a small stuffed rabbit. Ronan pushed the rabbit down into the kit so Adam couldn’t see it and grabbed the disinfectant spray.

The sting of it as it foamed up on his leg startled Adam back to wakefulness. “Shit,” he gasped, forcing himself onto his elbows. Ronan sprayed more, ignoring him. The white foam turned red and orange with blood. As it slowly began to dissolve, fizzing out with a gentle hiss, Ronan pulled on blue latex gloves and reached for the first gauze packet.

Adam set his jaw and forced himself to even his breathing. Ronan applied the bandages with hesitant familiarity: he’d done it before, but had never been formally trained, and now he was doing it to someone else, which raised the stakes. Adam wondered if the fact that he was Adam raised the stakes more than it would for someone else. 

“It was the Third Sleeper,” Adam said. Ronan continued working without looking at him, but he knew he was listening. “I don’t know how. Blue said they got out before anyone opened the door, when the cavern collapsed. But I _know_ it was.”

“It made the trap?”

Adam nodded, swallowing with some difficulty. “It chased out Cabeswater, Ronan.” This he whispered, as if he were going to keep it a secret from the trees. Or maybe from himself. It was terrifying to think that there was a force of equal strength out there. “It swept right in and chased it out.”

Ronan’s brow was furrowed, casting a shadow over his eyes as he worked. He was silent for a minute, wrapping a long tan-colored bandage around his calf. He paused and grabbed the splint, set it against Adam’s leg, and then continued wrapping the bandage around it to keep it in place. “We’re going to the hospital. We’ll talk about it when we’re as far from that fuckin’ thing as we can get.”

He indicated the bear trap with a tilt of his chin. When he spoke again, his voice was unusually quiet, and Adam thought that maybe it was Ronan’s way of being gentle. “Sit up, Parrish. We’re gunna piggy-back this bitch.”

Even in his stupor, Adam narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you calling me a bitch?”

Ronan was already helping him sit up. Adam felt as though he had run a marathon. Two marathons. Uphill. His muscles were rubbery and useless. He felt feverish. He wanted to sleep. 

“Only if you keep flopping around like a flaccid dick. Let’s go.”

Ronan took both of Adam’s wrists and turned away, pulling either arm over his shoulders. He leaned forward, slowly levering himself onto his feet, and carefully pulled Adam with him. To his credit, Adam did what he could to help, but the careful dance was mostly Ronan’s doing. It took a few minutes, a lot of gasps, and a fair amount of half-swallowed moans and obscenities from both parties to get Adam onto Ronan’s back, and for Ronan to stand.

Adam gripped the front of Ronan’s t-shirt and squeezed his eyes shut, face pressed against the side of his neck. With his leg suddenly hanging, it felt like blood was flooding the limb, making it throb and protest. He tried to focus on his breathing as Ronan walked through the trees. 

It had been a very long time since Adam Parrish had been carried. He was worried his weight might knock Ronan over. This worry inspired a second, that his injured leg would be what they landed on. This was obviously not ideal, and so he tried to stay very still, and tried to think about anything besides falling, or his leg, or the reason for his leg being injured in the first place. 

He ended up thinking about how warm Ronan was, and how exhausted Adam was, and how Ronan’s back was not the worst place to fall asleep. 

“Stay with me, Parrish,” Ronan said, his deep voice vibrating against Adam’s chest. “Stay awake until we get out of Cabeswater. This place is fucking you up.”

“Protecting me,” Adam slurred into Ronan’s shirt collar. 

“It did, sure,” Ronan replied. “But it’s not _healing_ you.”

Adam thought about this. It was becoming difficult to really consider things in depth. “The sleeper,” he explained, hoping Ronan would understand. 

“Yeah. So stay awake.”

Fair enough.

Adam managed to keep his wits about him through the rest of the woods. The BMW was waiting, lights left on. It was gloaming out, cold day tilting into colder night. Adam had arrived at Cabeswater that morning, and the time shift was disorienting, because the woods had been soaked in daylight the whole time he was there, with the exception of that darkness. That oily, choking darkness. He thought he could still taste it on his tongue, like gasoline and bile.

Adam stayed awake as Ronan helped him into the passenger seat. He stayed awake as they sped along the road toward Henrietta. His head lulled against the window, but he focused on his breath fogging the glass. It was cold now; winter. He blinked languidly as they made it into town, lights blurring by in a haze.

Ronan played loud electronic music the whole way back, and constantly reached over to grip Adam’s arm, to make sure he was awake. Adam never thought he’d be grateful for Ronan’s music. He had thought, in the past, that he might be grateful for the frequent contact. 

When the music finally cut out, Ronan’s voice filled the car, and it took Adam too long to realize he was on the phone. Calling Gansey, it sounded like. Then a lull, and then Ronan’s voice again. Blue and Calla. The too-bright lights of the hospital parking lot engulfed the car all at once and Adam closed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he had been driven into this parking lot at night, accompanied by Ronan Lynch and needing medical attention. He tried not to think about it.

The car stopped. Ronan got out without a word, and for a moment after he slammed his door, Adam was engulfed in a warm silence, the heating vent still breathing air into the car. His focus slipped. He was too tired to go to the hospital, suddenly. He just wanted to sleep.

The door fell away beside him. Adam’s eyes opened as his full weight slumped toward the pavement below. The sensation of falling was quickly interrupted by Ronan, catching him. Muttering obscenities, he leaned into the car over Adam, and they were so close, for a moment. Adam’s face pressed against Ronan’s shoulder. Warm. Smelled nice. Safe. _Safe._

Ronan managed to unclick Adam’s seat belt, freeing him further. “Come on, Adam,” he said. But Adam kept his eyes closed. Too tired. It was so cold outside. He wanted to sleep. "Parrish, God damnit!"

The last thing he really remembered was Ronan swearing. Swearing at him, swearing at everything. A beautiful string of foul language, poetry in its own right. Lulling him to sleep. Ronan’s arms sliding under him, lifting him. 

Then, nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> No worries, he ain't dead.
> 
> Had a dream that Adam was attacked by darkness, woke up convinced my leg was fucked up. Thought I'd write about it. They just don't write "sad gentle boy getting caught in a bear trap" fics like they used to.


End file.
